Personally I've always thought that piece of conventional racing "wisdom" was penned by a corner worker who never took the green in his/her life. While I've seen some pretty dumb moves at T1, frankly between the starting line and it lies the best location to gain positions on the cheap.
Rick_________________'79 NA 924 Land Speed Car
Bonneville G/CPRO record holder @ 145.632 MPH
'96 LT4 C4 daily driver
Great Lakes SCCA SM points champion '09,'10,'11

Actually, the best/easiest time to gain positions is on the restart, IMO...

(Of course, the inverse is also true, and odds are that you're usually stuck behind some asshat who isn't paying and doesn't close up to the car in front during the yellow... so you lose more than you gain...)_________________Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 ITB racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype